1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to commercial produce processing, and more specifically to mechanically removing wrapper leaves from a harvested produce.
2. Related Art
The commercial produce industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. For example, lettuce is produced and shipped year round in the U.S. with the source of supplies changing with the seasons, with California and Arizona dominating U.S. production. Three types of lettuce dominate commercial production: iceberg, leaf lettuce, and romaine lettuce. Of these three types, iceberg lettuce makes up the majority of the commercial lettuce production in the U.S.
Conventionally, the harvesting of lettuce is predominately performed by hand. Field workers will typically hand cut the lettuce from its roots, and place the cut lettuce on a moving platform for subsequent processing and packaging. As part of the subsequent processing steps, outer leaves of the cut lettuce is typically removed for various reasons, such as unpalatable texture. These outer leaves that loosely wrap around a lettuce head are also referred to as “wrapper leaves”. The removal of wrapper leaves is conventionally a labor-intensive process performed by field workers, which requires workers to manually remove the wrapper leaves without damaging the delicate lettuce head.
Thus, what is needed in the art is a way to efficiently remove wrapper leaves from a harvested produce head without damaging the produce head before sending the produce head for further processing and packaging.